Saturday, February 21, 2015

... the West’s obsession with Israel’s treatment of the "Palestinians" helps perpetuate global misery by diverting attention from people in far greater distress (think Syrians or South Sudanese). ...[and also] also perpetuates suffering among the one group it’s ostensibly supposed to help–the "Palestinians". Three Jerusalem Post reports over the last week show why.

One warned that a leading Palestinian hospital is at risk of closure because of a $30 million debt. A major reason for this debt is that for years, the Palestinian Authority has failed to pay Mokassed Hospital for many of the patients it treats. This isn’t because the PA lacked money; it has ample funds to pay generous salaries to thousands of terrorists sitting in Israeli jails. Rather, it’s a matter of priorities: On the PA’s scale of values, paying terrorists for killing Israelis is evidently more important than paying doctors for healing Palestinians.

Almost 40 percent of the PA’s budget consists of foreign aid, with the vast majority coming from Western countries. The West is therefore uniquely placed to pressure the PA to alter its spending priorities. But it has never tried to do any such thing, because it only cares about what Israel does or doesn’t do.

Thus one factor that has recently exacerbated Mokassed’s problems has elicited worldwide condemnations: Israel’s withholding of tax revenues from the PA over the last two months in response to the latter’s egregious violations of the Oslo Accords, including joining the International Criminal Court. Yet even if Israel handed over that money tomorrow, there’s no reason to think the PA would suddenly start using it to pay Mokassed when it never did so in all the years before Israel halted the transfers.

In short, pressuring Israel won’t actually solve the problem; only pressuring the PA would do that. But since the West doesn’t care what the PA does, Palestinian patients will continue to suffer.

In the second report, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon criticized the PA for failing to take control of Gaza’s border crossings as it promised to do after last summer’s war. This failure, he noted, has greatly delayed Gaza’s reconstruction, since the reconstruction mechanism devised by the UN and Western donors mandated PA control of the crossings in an effort to minimize diversions of dual-use materials to Hamas’s war machine.

But because Israel has never sealed its border with Hamas-controlled Gaza completely–it has sent in 62,000 tons of construction supplies since August despite the PA’s absence from the crossings–the real hardship has occurred along the Egyptian border. The Rafah border crossing is Gaza’s main gateway to the world, but it has been closed almost hermetically for months, because Cairo considers Hamas a terrorist organization and refuses to reopen Rafah as long as Hamas controls it.

A particularly horrific consequence ensued in November, when an 11-year-old Palestinian died because the Rafah closure prevented her from entering Egypt for needed medical treatment. So why didn’t she go to Israel instead? Because Hamas refuses to talk to Israel directly, so requests for medical entry permits from Gaza are sent through the PA. But according to Razan al-Halkawi’s relatives, the PA refused to forward her request because it was embroiled in one of its periodic spats with Hamas.

In short, the PA refused to do what was needed to enable al-Halkawi to get treatment in either Egypt or Israel. And so she died.

As the PA’s major donor, the West could be pressing the Palestinians to live up to their post-war commitments. But it won’t, because if Israel can’t be blamed, it doesn’t care.

Report number three: Thousands of Palestinians who bought homes in the new Palestinian city of Rawabi can’t move in because the city isn’t connected to the water system. Why? Because all West Bank water projects need approval by the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee, which the PA has refused to convene for the last five years. Evidently, it would rather deprive its own people of better housing than agree to meet with Israeli officials.

Here, too, the West could use its financial leverage to press the PA to convene the panel and let Rawabi open. But it hasn’t, because if Israel can’t be blamed, it’s not interested.

In short, in numerous cases where the West could use its leverage over the PA to better the lot of ordinary Palestinian [Arab]s, it has refused to do so, because it only cares about Israel’s actions. And thus the biggest victims of the West’s Israel obsession have ended up being not Israelis, but the Palestinian [Arab]s themselves.

We are on the eve of Secretary Kerry’s latest foray into creative diplomacy with Iran, and thus, as on past occasions, inundated by leaks and rumors. So let’s clear the chalkboard of the many deceptions, lies and confusions that surround the talks. Here are the basic principles to keep in your frontal lobes as the information flows:

The Iranians do not need a deal.
Even if you believe they were so crippled by sanctions that they swallowed their pride and sat down to talk with us, by now the sanctions are greatly reduced, and the regime has innumerable ways to get around them anyway. Moreover, the Iranians believe they are winning right now, and why shouldn’t they? Think Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and big chunks of Africa.
And remember that Khamenei does not want a deal with the satanic Americans. If he gets most everything he wants without a deal, why make one?To put it a bit differently, what if the Iranians came to the negotiations NOT because they were groaning under the burden of sanctions, but because they believed the American will was broken? That would mean that the negotiating room would be the site of American surrender, not Iranian agreement to Western restrictions.
We know that Zarif treats Kerry with contempt, yelling at him frequently. Does that not suggest the Iranians are in Geneva to dictate the terms of OUR surrender?

Obama desperately wants a deal,
which he has always considered the greatest possible foreign policy accomplishment of his presidency.

Indeed, Obama has already made a deal with Iran,
but it isn’t only, and not primarily, about nukes. In essence, he’s given Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, a veto over U.S. Middle East policy.

Obama has embraced the two pillars of Iranian ambition: he’s in full support of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and he’s in full opposition to Israel and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

This is the strategic alliance Obama has been secretly negotiating since the presidential election campaign of 2008. We don’t know the details; hell, we don’t even know the contents of the interim deal (aka JPOA). State has a version, the Iranians have a different one. Whatever is said publicly needs to be checked, but the “agreement,” being secret, is uncheckable. Alas, even the most pugnacious congressional investigators have not managed to pry loose this fundamental information. And yet we know the names of the back channels, from Jake Sullivan to Valerie Jarrett. Some senator or congressman should arrange for public testimony. If we knew more about the negotiations we’d be better placed to evaluate whatever oozes out of Geneva in coming days.

There IS a Syria strategy.
It’s part of the Iran strategy: make Khamenei happy, maybe he’ll make Obama look good by agreeing to the nuclear deal.

Hostages.
You can be sure we’re dealing with the Iranians about American hostages in their clutches, from the Marine to the priest to the WaPo correspondent. But none of the bigtime journalists has taken an active interest in this very important component of the U.S.-Iran “relationship.” Back in the eighties, when Reagan’s dealings to free U.S. hostages seemed a gigantic scandal, every scribbler in town was digging for details. Not today. I want to believe there will be an accounting for these accomplices to the big coverup. But who will blow the whistle?

I hope that helps. Don’t be surprised if there is no deal. As the last two times around, the most likely outcome is that Khamenei pockets his gains and keeps on wheeling and dealing.
And we say “we’re making great progress.”

The hell of it is that Iran is very vulnerable, its citizens waiting for some signal from the West that time has finally run out on this cruel regime of fanatics and mass murderers. When that moment arrives, everyone will be amazed at how hollow the Islamic Republic really is. Remember Gorbachev? Gone in a microsecond…

...Europe has been discovering to its horror that once again Jews are being made victims in its midst – and once again it is powerless to protect them.

Protesters in support of Hamas in Gaza displayed a swastika at a Paris rally

Jews are leaving France in great number because the risk of violence to them there has become acute...

Figures produced by the UK Community Security Trust have shown that anti-Jewish incidents in Britain last year reached record levels, more than doubling over the previous year.Jews were abused in the street at a rate of more than one a day, particularly if they were wearing religious clothes or a Jewish school uniform.

In Birmingham four Asian men tried to storm a former synagogue shouting: “Kill the infidels, you are Satan-worshipers, are there any effing Jews in there.” On the same day a rabbi driving through London reportedly had “Slaughter the Jews” shouted at him in Arabic by a man running his finger across his throat in a cutting action.

A recent report by the Parliamentary Committee on Antisemitism noted “a palpable concern, insecurity, loneliness and fear following the summer’s rise in incidents and subsequent world events.”

The British government is undoubtedly concerned. The home secretary, Theresa May, said she never thought she’d see the day when British Jews thought they didn’t have a future in this country. The local government minister, Eric Pickles, has warned that a “creeping cultural acceptance” of anti-Semitism is taking over in Britain.

Yet such recognition is distinctly belated.

Remarks about Jews controlling the media or US foreign policy, which would never have been tolerated when I was growing up in London, have become commonplace amongst mainstream politicians and commentators.The fact that every single UK Jewish communal event has to be guarded is accepted as a fact of life. The fact that there are Jewish schools that look like fortresses and Jewish schoolchildren being taught self-defense to protect themselves against street attack is considered normal.

For the first time I can remember, concern is being publicly expressed about anti-Jewish feeling. Yet until very recently, anti-Semitism was the prejudice that dare not speak its name.

Attempts to point out that the anti-Israel lunacy dominating public discussion reflected the unique and deranged properties of anti-Jewish attitudes going back centuries generally provoked claims of “waving the shroud of the Holocaust” to sanitize Israel’s crimes.

Yet this anti-Israel obsession displays the same unique properties as Jew-hatred: obsessive falsehoods, holding Israel responsible for all the ills of the world, accusing it falsely of perpetrating crimes such as genocide or the deliberate targeting of innocents of which it is itself the victim. It has also fueled attacks on Jews, massively stoking the hysteria in a Muslim world preconditioned to believe Jews are out to destroy it.

Attacks on Jews always spike after any Israeli military action. This leads the Israel-bashers to blame Israel for provoking such attacks.

The real cause of the recent rise, however, is the inflammatory way Israel’s actions last summer were reported which libelously painted the IDF as inhuman child-killers.

Not surprisingly this enraged many, particularly Muslims already conditioned by Islamic Judeophobia. As a result of this and the impunity afforded to the Israel-bashers, Jews have increasingly been targeted ever more brazenly as Jews without the fig leaf of anti-Zionism.

Thus the Tricycle Theatre tried to ban the Jewish Film Festival from its premises on the basis that it received a small donation from the Israeli Embassy (a ban later rescinded after protests), and Gaza demonstrators trashed kosher food in dozens of grocery stores.

After the Paris attacks, political leaders promised to stand against terrorism and to protect Europe’s Jews. But this was a hollow promise. These leaders repeatedly deny that Islamic terrorism has anything to do with Islam. They thus ignore the theological driver of the Jew-hatred that courses through the Islamic world, deeming any such talk instead to be “Islamophobic.”If political leaders can’t even acknowledge who is attacking Jews and why, their commitment to protect them is merely political posturing.

Those who deny the obvious linkage between anti-Israel lunacy and Jew-hatred now stand amazed at the murder of European Jews, while Jews in Britain and elsewhere in Europe wonder which of them will be next.

The Left refuses to acknowledge that Islamists are murdering Jews for no other reason than they exist, because to do so would undermine the Left’s contention that all such violence is only in response to Israel’s actions.

So to neutralize the impact of the murder of European Jews and the threat to countless others, they draw an obscene moral equivalence between Jew-hatred and Islamophobia, thus obscuring altogether the fact that these attacks on Jews are being perpetrated by Muslims.

More generally, even among those who are genuinely shocked by the attacks on European Jews there is a failure to understand their significance. For Jew-hatred is not a prejudice like any other. Not only does it possess unique properties but it lies at the heart of a society’s death wish.

Jews are the conscience of the world. Those who want to destroy the Jews want to tear out their own heart. And Judaism’s moral codes lie at the very core of Western civilization.

Europe, however, seems increasingly uncertain about whether it wants to defend that civilization. America, for so many years the site of culture wars over Western core values, is also seeing these slowly erode, although unlike Europe the US remains protected through the strength of its Christian heartlands.

So is Europe finished? Well, that depends on whether or not it will summon the will to identify, reaffirm and fight to defend the core values it has spent years undermining.

The Jews gave it those values. If it fails to protect its Jews, that will not be just another moral stain on Europe. It will have also failed to protect itself.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Volunteers with Iraq’s Badr Organization patrol in Tikrit, Iraq, on Feb. 7. Badr and other Iran-backed Shiite militias are playing a more important role in the fight against the Islamic State. (Ali Mohammed/European Pressphoto Agency)Shiite militias backed by Iran are increasingly taking the lead in Iraq’s fight against the Islamic State, threatening to undermine U.S. strategies intended to bolster the central government, rebuild the Iraqi army and promote reconciliation with the country’s embittered Sunni minority.With an estimated 100,000 to 120,000 armed men, the militias are rapidly eclipsing the depleted and demoralized Iraqi army, whose fighting strength has dwindled to about 48,000 troops since the government forces were routed in the northern city of Mosul last summer, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

A recent offensive against Islamic State militants in the province of Diyala led by the Badr Organization further reinforced the militias’ standing as the dominant military force across a swath of territory stretching from southern Iraq to Kirkuk in the north.

As they assume a greater role, the militias are sometimes resorting to tactics that risk further alienating Sunnis and sharpening the sectarian dimensions of the fight.

They are also entrenching Iran’s already substantial hold over Iraq in ways that may prove difficult to reverse. Backed and in some instances armed and funded by Iran, the militias openly proclaim allegiance to Tehran. Many of the groups, such as the powerful Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kitaeb Hezbollah, are veterans of the fight to eject American troops in the years before their 2011 departure.

In one telling sign of how far Iraq is sliding into Iran’s orbit, giant billboards advertising the militias’ prowess and featuring portraits of Iran’s late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now partially obscure the plinth in central Baghdad where Saddam Hussein’s statue stood before U.S. Marines tore it down in 2003.

The militias’ growing clout is calling into question the sustainability of a strategy in which U.S. warplanes are bombing from the sky to advance the consolidation of power on the ground by groups that are backed by Iran and potentially hostile to the United States, analysts say.

If the fighting continues on its current trajectory, there is a real risk the United States will defeat the Islamic State but lose Iraq to Iran in the process, said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Though Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has welcomed American assistance and is calling for more, the militias’ strength threatens to undermine his authority and turn Iraq into a version of Lebanon, where a weak government is hostage to the whims of the powerful Hezbollah movement.

“The Shiite militias don’t want the Americans there and they never did,” Knights said. “Will we see an attempt by these Iranian-backed militias to push us out completely?”

As U.S. commanders mull sending ground troops to assist a planned offensive to retake Mosul, some militia groups are already starting to question the need for U.S. help.

“We don’t need them, either on the ground or in the air,” said Karim al-Nouri, spokesman and military commander for the Badr Organization, which has emerged as the most powerful of the armed groups. “We can defeat the Islamic State on our own.”

‘Exceptional methods’

Iraqi officials point out that militias have filled a huge need, providing muscle and manpower at a critical time and helping reverse the Islamic State’s advance toward Baghdad. U.S. help came late, more than two months after the militants surged toward the capital, they complain. An effort to rebuild the collapsed Iraqi army only began in December and so far has not graduated any trainees.

“We are in a transitional period, and we are in a state of emergency,” said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a member of parliament with Abadi’s State of Law coalition. “There is an existential threat, and that threat warrants using exceptional methods.”

The militias, which prefer to be described as “popular mobilization forces,” point out that their deployment has been authorized both by the government and by a fatwa from Iraq’s chief religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

But the militias’ chain of command runs through their own leaders, and in many instances directly to Iran. The man appointed to coordinate their activities is Iraq’s deputy national security adviser, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the nom de guerre of an Iraqi sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury for his role as a top Iraqi commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. He was convicted in absentia by Kuwait for his part in bombings at the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983.

Qassem Soleimani, the top commander of the Iranian force, makes regular appearances on the front lines in Iraq, echoing the battlefield swings undertaken in the last decade by U.S. generals.

Direct battlefield command is increasingly being assumed by the newly powerful Badr leader Hadi al-Amiri, who claims to be responsible for drawing up war plans on behalf of the security forces as well as the militias.

At a rally held earlier this month to celebrate the rout of Islamic State fighters in the province of Diyala, Amiri took the starring role.

“Our mission is to liberate Iraq with Iraqis, and not with foreigners,” Amiri told jubilant fighters chanting his name. “We must fight sectarianism, bring reconciliation and maintain the unity of Iraq.”

Killings in a village

On a tour of the recently liberated villages, the danger that the militias’ role might only serve to enhance sectarianism was apparent. In one village, al-Askari, every home had been burned, a tactic Sunni politicians allege is intended to cleanse whole areas of Sunnis and prevent them from returning home.

Badr escorts declined to take reporters to another village, Barwana, where at least 53 and possibly as many as 70 Sunni men were found shot dead execution-style after the Islamic State defeat. Witnesses and Sunni politicians say the men were civilians who had taken refuge in Barwana after their own village was overrun by the militants. They accuse Shiite militias of carrying out the killings.
The Badr Organization has denied that it was involved, but its leaders also deny that the men were civilians.

“Those Barwana people who stayed belonged to the Islamic State,” said Nouri. “What were we to do? Throw roses to them, or kill them?”

“The Islamic State are savages,” he added. “When we face them, we expect mosques to fall down and houses to burn, because we are not playing a football match with them, and we are not having a picnic.”

‘Terrified’ Sunnis

Such methods will not help promote the reconciliation that forms a central plank of U.S. policies toward Iraq, said Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, who recently visited Baghdad and noted the surge in militia influence with alarm.

“The Iraqis are getting ready to reconquer the Sunni heartland, and they’re going to go in with a Shiite force... The Sunni populace are terrified, and they will regard this as a Shiite invasion of their homeland. That won’t end the civil war, it will inflame it.”

Despite the militias’ boasts, however, it is unclear whether they are capable of pursuing the fight into the Sunni heartland, including the provinces of Anbar, Salahuddin and Nineveh, where the Islamic State is most firmly established.

So far their successes have been confined mostly to areas where Shiites predominate, including to the south of Baghdad, some parts of eastern Salahuddin and most recently, Diyala.

But Nouri, the Badr commander, said the militias would prefer not to have American help even for an assault on Mosul.

If the United States wants to continue with its airstrikes now, “we don’t have a problem,” he said. “But they should not strike while we are on the ground. We don’t want history to record that we conducted an offensive with American cover.”

Obama does not want Netanyahu in Washington because he considers Israel’s prime minister a serious spoiler of his most important foreign policy initiative – an agreement with Iran. He’d like to oust him from Jerusalem as well, and has made efforts to unseat Israel’s prime minister. He takes seriously Netanyahu’s statement that Israel is not bound by America’s unilateral agreements. In Obama’s view, Netanyahu may still utilize the military option, and thereby destroy his only foreign policy “success.” Indeed, among the candidates for prime minister in the upcoming elections, only Netanyahu is passionate about Iran, and only Netanyahu would consider ordering the IDF to attack Iranian nuclear installations in defiance of the US. Unfortunately, there are many sources of tension between the Obama administration and Netanyahu’s government. The main issue of discord is, of course Iran. Obama seeks an agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran over its nuclear program that will allow President Obama to claim that he prevented Tehran from building the bomb. The fact that Iran will maintain the capability to enrich uranium, and will not dismantle any of its nuclear installations, is simply swept under the rug as insignificant. Strange as it sounds, it seems that Obama is prepared to brand Iran as a US strategic partner in the attempt to bring stability to a region beleaguered by chaos.Part of this realignment involves American capitulation on the nuclear issue, and an apparent carte blanche for stepped up Iranian activity and influence in the region. Iran is

taking over Yemen (and throwing American diplomats out of the country);

carving a sphere of influence in Iraq;

continuing to support the brutal Assad regime in Damascus;

strengthening Hizballah’s grip over Lebanon;

engaging in subversion in Central Asia; and

developing its terrorist apparatus.

In the context of Obama’s “Grand Bargain” with Iran, all this seems to be okay. Tehran gets all it wants, while Washington gets an Iranian promise not to go nuclear as long as Obama is in the White House. Having made no foreign policy achievements throughout his presidency, Obama, perhaps obsessively, now wants the relationship with Iran to serve as his foreign policy legacy.

This foolish behavior negatively affects America’s own position in the Middle East, as well as the national interests of its closest ally, Israel. Obama does not care about American international stature. He has advocated a retrenched position in world affairs. Israel, as well, has never been close to his heart, but Obama understands that Israeli concerns strike a sensitive chord with the American public. This is precisely why he does not want Netanyahu to speak in the US Congress.

Obama fears that Netanyahu’s planned March 3 speech could become a catalyst for a public debate about his own dangerous policy toward Iran. He does not want undue publicity for his dangerous foreign policy gambit. The last thing he needs is a gifted orator such as Netanyahu pointing out the glaring deficiencies in the American approach toward Iran.And this is precisely why Netanyahu is determined to defy Obama’s wishes. The gravity of the Iranian threat is understood by Israelis of all political hues. As long as there is a chance, however slight, that an address to Congress will reinvigorate the public debate in the US on Iran, and obstruct the administration’s attempt to sign a deal, Netanyahu feels compelled to make a stand against all odds to halt a bad deal with Iran. Paradoxically, Obama’s efforts to prevent Netanyahu from visiting Washington, and to convince Congress members to boycott the session, only increase the interest in what Israel’s prime minister has to say.Beyond the personal animosity and the vast difference in worldviews, Obama does not want Netanyahu around because he considers Israel’s prime minister a serious spoiler of his most important foreign policy initiative. But it is not only in Washington that Obama considers Netanyahu to be unwelcome. Obama wishes to be rid of Netanyahu in Jerusalem as well. This is not the first time we have been witness to American intervention in Israeli elections; with the White House showing displeasure with Likud candidates, and enlisting Jewish activists and donors for the anti-Netanyahu campaign.Obama does not want Netanyahu as prime minister of Israel even after a deal is signed with Iran. He has no desire to be exposed to Netanyahu’s continued criticism, based on the realization that the proposed deal has many loopholes, or based upon probable Iranian violations of the agreement. He also takes seriously Netanyahu’s statement that Israel is not bound by America’s unilateral agreements. In Obama’s view, a paranoid Netanyahu may still revert to the military option, and thereby destroy his only foreign policy “success.” Obama is probably right on this point.Among the candidates for prime minister in the Israeli elections, only Netanyahu is passionate about Iran, and only Netanyahu would consider ordering the IDF to attack Iranian nuclear installations in defiance of the United States.

While the campaign in Israel is focused more on personalities than on issues, the underlying theme of the elections is the Iranian threat and who is best placed and most experienced to tackle this challenge.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

...on the issue of [Netanyahu's] acceptance of Boehner’s invitation to present Israel’s perception of the Iranian nuclear issue to the representatives of the American people, there should be no room for equivocation.

Indeed, it is virtually inconceivable that, with regard to Iran, all Israelis, irrespective of their political hue, should not rally behind him, present a unified front to the outside world, and convey a sense of pride that an Israeli leader will be the only person besides Winston Churchill to address the US legislature three times.

Concern over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and the danger it poses to the survival of the nation should be common to all shades of political opinion in Israel.

...Yet despite the dictates of reason and national interest, quite the opposite has taken place.

Instead of uniting behind the nation’s elected leader’s endeavor to thwart the conclusion of what increasingly appears to be a perilously ill-advised deal with Tehran’s tyrannical theocracy, the invitation to speak has been exploited to generate sharp division in the country.

Domestic opposition to Netanyahu’s acceptance of the invitation falls into two broad categories.

The first is that it will create friction with the White House, thus undermining Israel’s “greatest strategic asset,” its relationship with the US.

The second is that it is a cynical maneuver to gain unfair advantage in the March election.

Both...are inappropriate and/or disingenuous.

... Moreover, they are likely to prove distinctly counter- productive and help precipitate precisely the outcomes they ostensibly seek to avoid.

If anything, it is the prime minister’s electoral rivals who are cynically exploiting the proposed address, not only to score political points at home by denigrating his leadership, but by presenting acceptance of the invitation as siding with the Republicans against the Democrats, thus undermining bipartisan support for Israel in Washington.

Divisive in US because divisive in Israel

To a large degree, the issue of Netanyahu’s address to Congress has only become a divisive political issue in the US because it has become a politically divisive issue in Israel. In fact, much of the Democratic opposition to the address has been fed by domestic opposition to it in Israel.

...A highly plausible case can be made for the claim that the ostensible Democratic ire at the PM’s acceptance of the congressional invitation is to a great extent a derivative of the vicious criticism he has been subjected to at home.

It was the domestic portrayal of Netanyahu’s acceptance of Boehner’s invitation as disrespectful confrontation with the White House, which virtually compelled some Democrats to rally around the president against the alleged assault on his honor. After all, could they let themselves be seen as less mindful of his prestige than Buji Herzog and Tzipi Livni??

...the animosity Bibi’s political rivals feel toward him appears to have eclipsed their commitment to the national interest.

‘Chamberlain of the 21st century…’

Few could have made this case in stronger terms than a self-confessed twice-over supporter of Obama, Alan Dershowitz, who in a recent interview dismissed the negotiations as a “joke.”

Dershowitz, a long standing Democrat, excoriated the prospective accord:

“This is a very bad deal, a bad deal for the United States, a bad deal for the international community...My fear is that... Barack Obama is going to go down in history as the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century.”

... “We will point to this point in history and say, this was the turning point. This was the point where the president could’ve recognized the greatest threat to the world in the 21st century and, like Chamberlain in the 20th century, he failed to do it. That will be his legacy...:

...But of course none of this really is of interest to Netanyahu’s domestic adversaries.

None could really have any doubt as to the prime minister’s oratory skills; none really believe he could not present Israel’s case persuasively and convey its concerns eloquently.

Their opposition to him addressing Congress is not rooted in any fear he will not perform competently. Quite the contrary, it is rooted in the fear that he will perform too competently – and hence by discharging his duty as the elected prime minister, enhance his electoral prospects. As if that is not precisely what prime ministers in democracies are supposed to do – i.e. perform competently so as to be reelected.

This, then, is the real reason for the resistance to Netanyahu’s address – not concern for the national interest, or for erosion of bipartisan support for Israel, or alarm over the degradation of Israel’s relationship with the White House.

The cynical motivation behind the political opposition... was dramatically exposed by the petition the leader of the far-left Meretz faction Zehava Gal-On submitted to the Central Elections Committee last month.

In it, Gal-On demanded that coverage of his congressional address by Israeli TV and radio stations be banned on grounds that it constituted prohibited electioneering...

Happily, however,,..In recommending that Gal-On’s petition be rejected, the attorney-general wrote sensibly: “... the request to issue the aforementioned restraining order should be turned down since this is a clearly newsworthy event with a dominant effect in terms of news and current affairs.”...

*Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategicisrael.org).

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